Fresh UK postcode tool points out best mobile network in your area The UK's telecoms regulator has released an overhauled tool comparing mobile coverage and performance across the country, claiming this will help the millions of Brits missing out on the best local network. 5G repeater on a pole London's poor 5G blamed on spectrum, investment, and timing of Huawei ban READ MORE Ofcom, more …
The maps don’t even say if you can get 4G or 5G.
.. and weasels …. So just looks like it API/scrapes what is already there.
“Coverage is based on predictions provided by mobile network operators.
Performance is based on crowdsourced samples. Scores should be considered as a guide since there can be local variations.
Experience can vary due to a range of factors in your local area.
The information displayed may not always reflect your experience ‘on the ground’.”
Roughly the same here.
The blurb under the percentages includes "the chance of being able to stream video, make a video call, or quickly download a webpage with images to your phone when you have coverage." Lol. What about the chance of being able to make a phone call or send/receive SMS?
Wi-Fi calling for me >95% of the time, especially if it's been raining or they've recently "improved" the service.
For about 10 years I worked on this "predictive" mapping, starting from when it was just Cellnet (remember them?) until it was the whole world.
The important point to note is that his data is *computed*, not surveyed. Depending on the radio planning tool in use, and what the signal level the operator calls "good" coverage (anything from -90dB to -120dB) the output is at least partially fiction.
In Switzerland they used to use (25 years ago, dunno about today) a radio planning tool that did not take account of terrain. Go figure.
If I remember rightly, OFCOM defines the signal levels for the maps the operators provide.
But they use fixed values, chosen to represent sensitivity of an "average" handset - the one you're using may be better or worse. (Or both, in different frequency bands.)
Ofcom really should have provided the user experience and predictive data as two separate overlays, plus a mast and OS contour overlay.
The map looks okay if you assume unobstructed 360 degree outdoor coverage. However, I know for example the 3 masts are 2 miles away across the vale outside the front of my house and the EE mast is on the ridge behind the house. Hence why I can use EE in my kitchen and garden and Three out the front and in my office also overlooking the vale.
And broadcast radio coverage always used to be computed (probably still is, I'm out of touch now though I did hear rumours they were thinking about changing it) based on an aerial 10m above ground level. Granted, that standard was invented when many radios would have been connected to an external antenna, but it only remained relevant into the 1990s and beyond because radio sensitivity improved hugely as they became portable and reliant on little telescopic whips or totally internal aerials.
There are so many factors which affect mobile coverage that maps like this may only be relevant for working out if there is a transmitter within shouting difference. The foil-backed insulation in our rebuilt house has helped reduce signal level at one end of the building sufficiently to be a problem that didn't really exist previously.
M.
My house is served by two masts, approx 50 metres appart. Within a mile of my house. (love mixing metric and imperial)
2 of the opertaors are on one mast, and 2 on the other.
All networks are equally crap in the house and rely on wifi calling. and out side, only work off wifi if you stand at the end of the rear garden.
According to the map it ranges from good to excellent outdoors, and variable to good indoors across the networks.. when in fact its next to no service either indoors or out on any of the networks. Occasionally youl get a ping for a text message, or an alert for a voice mail for missed call that never rang.
So have to rely on my landline based broadband.to make and recevie calls/text etc when at home.
"My house is served by two masts, approx 50 metres appart. Within a mile of my house. (love mixing metric and imperial)
2 of the opertaors are on one mast, and 2 on the other."
In many (most?) locations O2 & Vodafone have had a mast sharing arrangement and likewise EE & Three have had a mast sharing arrangement, so in general there tend to be 2 sets of masts serving any location (I have seen 3 masts in some places, not sure if one of them is old and not yet decommissioned).
However now that Vodafone & Three have merged I assume the current arrangement will change. So perhaps O2 & EE will decide to share masts with VodafoneThree having their own, or perhaps O2, EE, and VodafoneThree will go back to having their own masts. Who knows.
Most of the CellCo’s flogged their masts businesses years ago to an assortment of ‘NewMastCo’ private equity scum. The mobile phone equivalent of sale and leaseback of your HQ Towerblock, Supermarket’s/Warehouses …. which has always worked out really well.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jul/26/vodafone-standalone-mobile-mast-business-towerco-europe
It list all networks as "Variable (outdoor only) - There is a variable chance of getting a good connection that will support services. Basic services such as voice and text messages are more likely to be available. Do not expect coverage indoors."
In my experience, is it much worse than that.
Still there are only about 300 properties, so not worth the effort to compete by giving a working service.
WiFi relies on householders either operating an open network or having the nous to change settings on a bit of equipment they don't own every time they swap providers and get new kit. Oh, and that the meters are within range of said kit. Using a network controlled by / on behalf of the suppliers is much more reliable, if it works. Old fashioned 2G would do it.
New water meters seem to work by some kind of NFC. Still means a van driving around, but probably more likely to be universally applicable than relying on a radio network.
M.
Well, the map view is correct in my experience for where I live - Three and EE get a good 4G signal that works indoors, O2 and Vodafone get a rubbish Edge signal that only works outdoors.
But then on the "performance" view, O2 gets 81% whereas EE only gets 80%? That I don't get. How can I be "more likely" to stream video on a flaky 1-bar Edge signal than a 4-bar 4G signal? I mean, both count as "having coverage" I guess, but it's completely at odds with what the map view (and reality) says.
According to the previous maps and this one, I am in an area with good indoor coverage on Vodafone, and I am paying for 'unlimited broadband'! In reality the mobile signal has trouble getting above 1Mb download when it's working and drops out completely at times. SO I had to pay for fibre to get any decent broadband connection, on BT Business to get a static IP address, which has the option of a 'backup' to the mobile as well. Monday that went down, and after 2.5 hours we had finally established that the router needed replacing ... which took 48 hours to arrive in the end. In the meantime I still had the Vodafone 'backup' since the BT one via mobile is not a lot of use if it's the router that is duff. No use obviously for local websites but over the two days the mobile signal was down as much as up.
Can I get a refund on the unused mobile broadband and just pay for what I ACTUALLY use, which was less than 1Gb over the two days ... I'm supposed to have 5G, but even 4G is simply not being provided reliably, but they will not even reduce the airtime contract to the level being provided by them.
There's a button "Provide Coverage Feedback" under the little map. ... YES but it does NOT allow you to flag that while there is an indication we can get signal, the reality is not the same! The potted answers are no use to anybody?
If anything it's slightly pessimistic here, it says Good Outdoor Only but I actually get an indoor signal, albeit not great (and both O2 and EE phones drop to WiFi calling most of the time). I suspect the reason is that I'm at the top of a steepish hill and the signal probably deteriorates a few houses down the street.
Most councils now appear to require bins to be left at the curtilage (ie. at the kerbside). For a significant number of people, particularly in rural areas, the curtilage may be a considerable distance from their house.
Those people are most requently the people who suffer very sketchy mobile coverage.
Esp. Indoors which self-evidently the bin Lorries don’t go.
Ofcom should have just made an App with submit your Cell Signal Strength directly from your phone. They could even pay some people to run it permanently in the background.
Perhaps they can ask Speedtest/Downdetector to add it next refresh.
I live in Worcestershire and our county council did exactly this. Their results are somewhat different from the Ofcom stuff, but an important thing to note is that the results shared from the bin truck mapping only report upload and download data speeds, that's very different to reliably making and holding calls, and from indoor coverage. Let's face it, if somebody reports signal coverage allegedly for your home address, then you probably care a lot more about indoor than outdoor performance?
Looking at the download speeds for my address, apparently EE are by far and away the best performer. Real world, only Three give any credible indoor performance.
The map tallies closely with the Ookla mobile phone coverage map for my area.
It does claim I can get good coverage on O2 indoors and outdoors.
Ahh, but that doesn't account for the cavity insulation, which has essentially turned my house into a faraday cage, no mobile phone signal indoors, and my WiFi doesn't leak into the garden unless I leave the balcony door open on the first floor so the router beam the internet outdoors...
I've come across that in the past. A client (of my employer) had built a brand new building as a business centre. Only the architect specified foil-backed insulation both in the external walls and some internal walls. So this business centre didn't have mobile coverage internally, and it was a p.i.t.a. to get wifi to all the rooms. A pox on clueless architects.
Apparently I should get "good outdoor coverage and limited indoor coverage"
Indoor is 95% signal strength with 64mbps downstream.
Feed back only lets me say what the coverage prediction is, and that is is wrong with worse quality.
No option to say the coverage is better then the prediction.
Mobile providers can market themselves (if they believe they have good coverage, and they have bulletproofed their eSIM handling)
Just offer free service for 1 day to eSIM equipped phones. No customer support (this is free after all) so it is on them to get the eSIM profile loaded onto their phone, but that would allow them to check out the coverage at home and at work or other common places they spend time.
There are three mobiles in my house on different providers and the ofcom site suggests that the best option would be EE, which is utter fantasy because the holder of the EE contract is unable to make calls anywhere on the property (including garden) unless they're connected to WiFi.
Likewise, according to the map EE has an 88% rating where I am. I can assure them that it doesn't. I rarely get a signal at all (and then only within a roughly 1 metre area upstairs), and even if I have a signal it is rarely capable of sending a text, and whilst the phone will ring out if someone calls, the signal vanishes if I try to answer it. I have tried several providers over the time I have lived here and none of the others were much different.
Here in the eastern part of the UK, once you get away from towns coverage is patchy, intermittent and the signal comes and goes during the course of a call.
Anyone who thinks that a mobile phone is all you need in the wider UK is a moron.
You are simultaneously allowing
- BT to shut off the landlines
- banks to enforce two-factor authentication via text to mobile phones
- electricity suppliers to install "smart" meters where there is no coverage
- while allowing the mobile phone providers to create huge swathes of poor coverage (and claim it's good enough)
None of us can reliably shop online where the coverage is bad, or "outside only". "Smart" meters don't work where there is no mobile coverage.
Please, require that every designer who is implementing some new use of mobile phones has to be familiar with this map.
The evidence so far is that those designers are all townies, fat and happy in their high-speed coverage, with no experience of the countryside.
The only downside is that if the equipment is on the top of the lorry it's generally picking up signal from above where most people get it, where it's less likely to be blocked by buildings etc.
Of course that works for people on the first floor of houses, but those on the ground floor or on the street may have signal blocks which are not present 1m or 2m above where they can physically reach.
The coverage is so variable where I am that I got a multi-network SIM. Still often have no coverage but at least I know it isn’t simply because I chose the wrong network.
But those Ofcom maps are way, way out in many places. Huge areas where there is coverage but they don’t tell us, and huge areas there is no or poor coverage that is not shown.
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